one short sleep past
by vis-et-decus
Summary: Knights of the Old Republic: II. Exile and Visas; death be not proud.


**D**eath be not proud, though some have called thee  
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so…

Holy Sonnet X // John Donne

***

"I don't understand the purpose of this."

He doesn't even bother looking up at her, instead focusing his attention on a shattered bedframe that he's attempting to convert into something that will hold his weight, if nothing else. He's long since given up on making it comfortable and aesthetically pleasing.

"There's nothing here--"

"Then why did you stop speaking whenever it was brought up?" His hands finally fall still and he runs a palm across his sweaty face, leaving a streak of dirt across his nose. "I can hear it in your voice. They're dead, but not gone. My father used to tell me the best way to get rid of something is to confront it direct, no dancing around."

Her mouth tightens into a thin line, but she retreats into the room across the hall and tries to come to terms with the fact that they are currently the only two living things on the surface of Katarr, and are the only two living things that have set foot on the planet for nearly five years.

***

What startles him the most about Visas is how incredibly warm she is.

He thinks it might be because of her time spent aboard the _Ravager_ -- the ship was quieter than death and twice as cold, and he makes up some sort of half-serious theory that her body started to heat up like an overloaded engine out of sheer necessity. He's never felt her skin to know for certain, of course, but he's felt that warmth nearly radiating from her gloved fingertips whenever she reaches out to touch him: when he's lying dazed in a puddle of broken stone that used to be a bench and a thick, viscous fluid that might be blood, when she inspects his head after he's nearly knocked himself unconscious because he's all leg and the house they're currently occupying isn't built quite high enough in all the wrong places, when she touches his shoulder for the briefest instant to get his attention.

He was born and raised a farm boy, the youngest son of a youngest son, and thus was no stranger to duty and privation and keeping his mouth shut when the Jedi came to lay their claim on him. There are still the softest traces of an accent around the corners of his words, and he can remember the first couple mornings at the temple when he'd laid awake, wondering why he'd been allowed to sleep in so late -- the stars had long since disappeared from the sky -- and why, exactly, his father hadn't been hollering for him to get his lazy behind out of bed. It had taken him months to realize there would be no chores, no father, no family -- and to this day, if he wakes up too early, the silence will perturb him still.

After all these years he's still a relatively naive boy when it comes to intimacy and all related matters, and he can't quite understand why Mira and Atton smirk at him over the rims of their cups when he mentions off-handedly that he starts sweating every time she comes around, or why Bao chuckles softly when he complains that she's "hotter'n a Tatooine draught."

Darkness has fallen and any heat that remained on the surface has stolen away; he swears up and down he can see his words freeze in mid-air whenever he tries to speak. Over dinner -- some concoction of dried rations and something that vaguely resembles ronto mucus -- he's about to ask her to come stay in his room for the night, joke about her being some sort of furnace, but his tongue falls still when she looks up at him curiously.

"It's cold, but you'll be comfortable tonight -- has anyone ever told you how warm you are?"

***

After dinner, he places his hand near a portable temperature sensor, and watches as it indicates a rise of five degrees.

*******

He's always moving -- he can't help it, a habit born from back on the farm where there were always three more things to be done for every chore he finished. There is always one part of his body that has to remain moving at all times: if it's not the tapping of his fingers or toes, it's how he fidgets and shuffles while standing still and when he absolutely can't stand it anymore, he's been known to explode into a random backflip. It was said that it was the ultimate test of Jedi patience to teach him meditation techniques as a youngling -- it would not be an exaggeration to say that there was a new master who tried his or her luck every other day.

So let him move, an abstract thinker later known as Darth Revan had suggested.

To date he has one of the most impressive human physiques because of the way he has to meditate. If it was said that he was only an adequate student of the Force, his critics might have also mentioned the fact that he was an unparalleled gymnast in the same breath. He never had the stocky frame Revan did, but he's broad in the shoulders and the lines sloping down from his hipbones have been tracked by more than one pair of eyes.

Or not-eyes, in this case, when Visas walks in on him hanging in an absolutely perfect iron cross from the cables he's strung across the ceiling to prevent it from falling in on him while he sleeps. He trembles slightly when she draws closer and tries to convince himself it's from fatigue.

"Lukas--" And there is a hand placed in the center of his chest; his heart threatens to crack his ribs with the force and speed at which it's pounding. "--don't you ever sit still?"

"Don't you?"

***

He can't find it in himself to be too terribly surprised when he watches her go over her lightsaber forms one afternoon, and notices her feet sliding into a stance that is all too familiar.

His.

***

Like many people, when he tries to put an idea out of his mind, it only returns to haunt him tenfold.

Move she does – but unlike he moves. When he moves his body speaks of raw power; her movements are more graceful, defined. Always balanced on her toes, the balls of her feet, like the best Twi'lek dancers right before the music flared up and the lights fell low. She practically hums with a latent energy that's ready to explode into action at any moment. In a way she reminds him of the grass serpents he used to play with as a child, and that makes him doubly wary because he also remembers for all the speed and skill of his hands, their fangs were always one quicker.

He finds himself watching her when he shouldn't; she'll occasionally raise her head to find him lowering his eyes, and refrains from saying anything about it. However, there is a gentle amusement beneath her words whenever she addresses him from then on, and he'll always reply with the feigned indifference of a man who knows better.

"Thought I heard children," he mutters one night after a half-hour of silence during dinner. "I know it's probably my head an' the wind, but I could've sworn…" He trails off, digging at the floor with a toe. He knew, he _knew_ he had heard curious high-pitched voices behind the corners and tiny footsteps running down the halls during the day, and when the light fell low, there were always small shadows dancing just beyond the edge of his peripheral sight.

"I knew this family." she replies, after a momentary pause. Her voice is carefully neutral. "They had five children, I think."

A smile spreads over his face, genuine now. "Really? I came from a big family myself. Seven of us, and I was the littlest… I missed that, sometimes. No one at the temple willing to get down and wrestle with me like my older brothers did. Even started to miss my sisters tryin'a dress me up and all that foolishness. Could you imagine…" His eyes burn silver with overwhelming eagerness and untold generations-- "…me gettin' married and having a herd of younglings running about? Why, I'd--"

She stands so quickly he would have called it a scramble if it weren't for the sheer fluidness with which she moved. He gets the awful feeling that she is not looking at him but rather _through_ him, and before he can respond she is gone with all the rage and beauty of a wildfire, leaving nothing but unanswered questions in her wake.

*******

He has been awake for five hours.

_Five hours, twenty-four minutes and sixteen seconds,_ his internal clock chimes in helpfully; he ignores the tiny voice with an ease that comes from years of practice.

The thought of going into Visas' room and questioning her about her earlier behavior crosses his mind for all of five seconds, then he throws an arm across his eyes and groans softly. Things have become infinitely more complicated since she joined the crew, and it doesn't help that he finds himself mesmerized by her -- she possesses an exotic beauty that's evident even through the layers of cloth, and he's terrified because she's become so important to him in such a short time.

"Empathy," Mira had explained one night in a slightly thicker voice than usual, the only outward sign that she had one too many bottles of smuggled brandy. Although her eyes were slightly lidded, she stared at him with a look that most females possess, the one that makes him feel stripped to his soul. "You understand what it's like to be the only one to walk away from a dead planet. Survivor's guilt?" A grin from her that would be more accurately called a sneer. "You're so much alike…"

Later that night, he'd stared down at Visas' sleeping form; traced the curves of her lips and the slope that combined her neck and shoulder with a touch that was not quite gentle, but understanding. He wanted to press his mouth to hers, taste the ash and memory of Katarr, but he was afraid that if he kissed her he might end up vanishing inside her lungs, melting into her bones and drowning in her bloodstream. He might just become a part of her – literally.

_So much alike--_

Biting off a curse that's waiting at the tip of his tongue, he sits up in bed and reaches for the tiny portable light that's by the bedside. However, his hand slips in the dark and returns to him not a light source but a tiny holorecording that was hidden so neatly between the tiles of the floor that he has to brush away at least a centimeter of accumulated dirt and grit before he fully figures out what it is.

Without hesitation, without thought, he turns it on.

Bright light. No noise. Then, a courtyard that seems strangely reminiscent of the one that stands outside the house, except there is a working fountain instead of a pile of rubble, the benches stand proud and upright as opposed to being tired, crumbling monuments to a time long past, and the pathways are not choked off by native flora reclaiming a kingdom lost.

Two children come into view, a boy and a girl. They look to be the same age, and are running -- fleeing, it would seem -- another girl, older, chasing the two delinquents out of view --

A boy in his early adolescent years, seated on one of the benches and looking perturbed at the chaos around him -- another boy, the oldest, grinning into the recorder, showing off a handsome face caught in the twilight between child and man, the soft curves of his jaw molding into harder muscle--

No noise--

The preadolescent boy stands and stalks off, presumably to find somewhere quieter to sit -- the teenager, baring his teeth in a feral grin -- the two little ones tumbling over themselves to get away from him -- the middle sister giving her eldest brother a reproachful look--

The two youngest children, mouths open, panting, rushing into the sanctuary of skirts provided by a young woman who has just walked into the midst of it all, she is gathering them into her arms with the smile that a mother reserves for her children alone--

He feels his heart go still, he could recognize that walk anywhere--

The children nestle into their mother's comforting hug--

She looks remarkably like--

***

"You… you never told me."

She glances up, startled; it is only because of the fact that he feels curiously betrayed that he is able to hold her gaze. He clutches the recording in his hands where it is repeating in an endless loop, an eternity trapped in a few seconds that will never be again.

"You never told me this was your family. Your house." The image wavers a bit as his grip tightens.

"What would you have had me say?" Her voice is a soft whisper; he feels his tongue go dry inside of his mouth, almost like the time he'd tried to speak during a Tatooine sandstorm and the wind had stolen all the moisture from his throat so swiftly that his lungs had nearly closed -- but this is far worse.

"Something. Anything. No wonder you'd never speak about this place. I would've listened. I… I'm not saying I could empathize, but I would have listened." Some ugly thing stirs to life within his chest as he watches the two children nuzzle into their mother's embrace. "You shouldn't ought to have hidden from me," he continues with a recklessness wrought of envy, accent coming on strong and fierce, "that you'd a husband'n children before I went an' fell in love with you'n started goin' on 'bout a family o' my own, an' now I know that I'll never be able to replace what you had, ever."

He expects anger, sorrow, accusations, possibly even regret -- but the one thing he does not count on and cannot comprehend is the look of stupefied disbelief on her face.

"I didn't have a husband or children," she replies with deliberate slowness; for a fraction of a second he resents being spoken to as if he were a padawan. However, the way her breath shudders gives away the fact that she is not speaking down at him -- instead, she is trying to mask the tears in her voice that she cannot shed with her eyes.

"That, Lukas--" His eyes flicker downward to the youngest girl in the recording. "--that is me."

***

Lukas can see the Hawk in the horizon, just a shimmer in the sky, coming to pick them up. Their ride only holds his attention for a heartbeat; then his eyes are resting on Visas' profile: she is looking skyward as well, nearly quivering with the anticipation of leaving the dead planet behind, but then she feels the weight of his gaze and turns her head to meet it.

Body heat. Movements. Fighting styles. Families. Pasts.

Futures.

_So much alike--_

For all the things that bind them together, the most important is this:

For all the nights his heart beat, sending out ripples of pain through the Force -- she heard his misery, was drawn to his wound. He was only going through the motions of being alive before she had come along; he ate, he slept, he walked and talked and breathed… and every moment before her, he wanted to go back to his time on Malachor and depart five minutes too late.

But she _had_ come along. Came to heal him. Came to make him whole. Came to show him that they're too alike in nearly every way possible to really be nothing else but one.


End file.
